


Night Drive Loneliness

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Driving, F/F, Heavy Drinking, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kissing, Late at Night, One Shot, Past Drug Use, Pre-Season/Series 01, Rain, Smoking, drinking and driving, ends with a kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: When Shorty's closes for the evening, Mercedes picks Wynonna up for a late night drive. They venture down a lost highway, just the two of them. Funny how someone’s presence can make you feel a little less lonely. The desire to get lost comes through.
Relationships: Wynonna Earp/Mercedes Gardner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Night Drive Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taintedsoul10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taintedsoul10/gifts).



> This fic contains some potentially heavy themes as a forewarning. Please take caution and be sure to take care. There is the mention of former recreational drug use and excessive drinking. Furthermore, allow me to state that I do not condone drinking and driving. I have written this scene solely as I imagine it's something Wynonna and Mercedes might have done in the past. Be safe, be responsible, and be well y'all.
> 
> The title of this piece comes from the song of the same name by Garbage. I dedicate this fic to my mate, taintedsoul10: your love of this series got me tuned into the franchise so I thank you for that. :) Looking forward to watching Season 4.

I'm so nervous  
Like a cat on a hot tin roof and,  
I want to get wasted.  
Forget all about it.

 _Night Drive Loneliness_ \- Garbage 

At 2 AM on a damp summer night, Shorty’s closes up and leaves Wynonna Earp still thirsty, still hungry, still looking for something to patch up her old, oozing wounds and rusted resolve. Her worn combat boots have seen better days, much like herself, as she trudges out of the bar with a near dejected demeanor. Had she lingered longer, Waverly would no doubt lecture and play the role of saint – saving her from deeper embarrassment. Bleary-eyed, she dusts herself off. Shakes her head though it rattles, a sure sign of her impending migraine come the cruel morning light.

The leather of her jacket creases and groans, her mouth drier than a desert. Wynonna’s hand coasts along her pursed mouth.

From behind, the distant purr of an engine becomes louder than thunder. She musters a glance over her shoulder, sidelong at first before stopping dead in her tracks under the swaying lights of Purgatory – the kind of bulbs that threaten to blow due to a lack of a budget or a testament to how everything and everyone in this place is pretty broken down.

Not surprisingly, Mercedes ( _who the hell names their kid after a damn car?_ ) Gardner rolls up in her cute-as-shit ride. Matches her city girl, pretty-in-pink tailored suit. The window slides down, reveals her face, fully made up despite the ungodly hour.

“Hey, Aphrodite. Still working your magic, I see,” Wynonna quips with her hands thrust deep into her pockets. Her keys dig into her palm, leave behind a brand.

“Get in loser,” Mercedes commands in the recital of a popular line straight out of a flick.

Yeah, she’s a little bit of a bitch. They both are with their barbed wire quips that let them forget who they are and where they come from.

“Just like old times,” she declares with a cock of her head. A throaty laugh follows.

So, the comeback kid, takes a seat beside the primadonna girl. Without further ado­, Wynonna settles for shotgun like second-in-command. The door slams shut behind her as she makes herself comfortable. Shifts into the seat that’s a little stiff, a little too new. They’ve been around the block before, driving around to get sober or to lose themselves, sometimes both.

As vagabond teens, Wynonna piloted responsibility far better than Mercedes. Back in the day, Mercedes recalls her high when Wynonna assumed control of the wheel after their junior year. Dreams of their youth leave behind the cold wake of adulthood. They can’t regress, they can only push forward, no matter what entails.

Wynonna presses her pulsating temple to the cool window, leaving an imprint that Mercedes is sure enough to gripe about. In the car, Wynonna affords a glance at what money can buy. Mercedes Gardner looks like she walked off the curb of Fifth Avenue in her six-inch heels-to-kill pressed against the pedal. With her influence and prestige, she’d buy the whole damn town if she could. Once upon a time, the two of them together could have conquered this bleak, dismal, dust-clad place. Alas, there’s no overcoming their trauma, their destiny, whatever poets spin it to be.

Engine roaring, it’s exciting to run through the night. Cruising down the same roads that lead to nowhere in Purgatory.

“Good to know your complaints haven’t changed,” she starts. Maybe tonight’s dose of Jack Daniel’s has her sentimental, nostalgic, and a little appreciative of the lift. “You know, you’re more than a bitch.”

Cruelty, like spittle, flows free from their mouths. Insincerity gets replaced by a smile, a grin, a comfortable lapse in silence along with the bleeding blur of all the shops lost to the nighttime drive.

“-And you’re more than what you _eat_ , Wynonna,” she counters with a know-it-all bob of her head that jolts her shock of copper hair.

Quips fling to and fro, a natural course to them, akin to a river’s meandering curves. Mercedes’ tenacity for talking shit acknowledges no bounds due to the Anna Karina principle of unhappy families. Gone are the days of striking matches just to watch them burn.

“Whatever you say, Queen Bee.”

Just a derelict, always feeling like a screwup around the debutante’s sparkling image, Wynonna rests the heel of her worn sole against the dashboard. Bounces her leg. She crooks her knee, rests a hand on her thigh. That faded, leather jacket of hers creases, wrinkles, cracks in some parts. Dark, brown locks flow well past her shoulders.

Streetlamps bear a vague, off-key resemblance to Christmas lights painting a warm amber glow of illuminated orbs. In a welcome reprieve from the mundane, they cast aside their waspish comments along the sensual curve of the road. All things considered, Mercedes wears her mask of play pretend. A little joyride offers a temporary means of escape. With Mercedes’ heel pushing the gas, there’s no slowing down. They whip around a corner. So it’s a little unsafe, but they like to live that way in welcoming the sight of a row of evergreen blanketed by abysmal night.

So much and yet nothing at all has changed between them. Whatever happened to the time when they were young, bumbling girls?

While she chews her gum, Mercedes clenches her jaw - slides it back and forth, grinds her teeth in a way that only ever managed to irk Daddy dearest. She blows a bubble. _Pop!_ Wynonna watches the pink wad deflate before Mercedes cranks down her window again to spit that wad out.

Wynonna spreads her legs further, knee brushing against the interior of the door, in a lax gesture while they lapse into a companionable silence. Her gaze drifts toward the window although she detects the subtle aroma of lingering perfume: a trace of gardenia to the veil of her hair. Although Wynonna will never know the name of that smell, she finds the source to be a comforting, reassuring safe place amidst her drunken thoughts.

The radio disrupts the withstanding quietude as she stares out to the shades of black and blue that offer shadows marionetting the vague forms of trees, of animals, of nothing at all.

Although deemed to be high maintenance, Mercedes casts aside her public persona in favor of the private one. Sometimes, Mercedes considers leaving a life of Dolce & Gabanna, of Prada, to take to the woods, driven by the salacious dance of maenads in honor of Bacchus, in honor of Dionysus. Horseshit, her father called it. A way to keep busy, her mother insisted. 

With her hands white knuckling the wheel, she cannot hide behind her compact and powder. Over time, Mercedes’ fine-boned hand grows slack without a seeming care in the world. Still, Mercedes keeps a watchful eye on the strip of asphalt before them.

In another life, they venture down a lost highway, just the two of them. A still sense of calm washes over Mercedes and Wynonna. With a case of small-town blues, the burning desire to get a little lost comes through. So, she takes one too many turns, refusing to use the GPS or drive either of them home.

In the convergence of misery, funny how someone’s presence can make you feel a little less lonely. Cruising along with nowhere in mind, the sudden turns match the swerves of her life. Sailing down the road feels faintly like flying.

Party girl Wynonna can’t describe the burning sensation within her chest. Instead, she compares it to whiskey’s noxious albeit pleasant burn. In a pair of restrictive jeans, her muscles grow impossibly tense. Wasps rather than butterflies rattle around in the pit of her belly.

“How about we find a lonesome hill to park on to watch the stars?” Mercedes suggests with a stiff lift of her shoulders.

The blend and blur of scenery frame the road as a liminal space, stretching on for all eternity.

“I’m game,” Wynonna agrees, finds herself compliant with a small nod, a little sleepy from her overindulgence-cum-intoxication.

With Mercedes and in privacy, Wynonna drops the bravado. In favor of Wynonna’s wiles, Mercedes overlooks her cosmopolitan views. Prim and proper, one of her palms (other still managing the wheel) coasts along her finely tailored two-piece suit. As modern royalty accustomed to _la dolce vita,_ the city treated Mercedes well, though home is a vortex that pulls you back in. Secrets never get buried in a place like Purgatory. They trickle up to the surface, fresh mud after a downpour. 

“We could’ve left this shithole behind,” Mercedes confesses. “And we did for a time, but look at us now.”

“Here we are,” she replies, albeit begrudgingly.

Between tipsy and drunk, she can’t quite gauge where she stands with the princess who handles the wheel. Blearily, she shuts one eye. Cracks the other open, all wary and trying to swallow her pessimism, very much like an alley cat that comes staggering back for more.

Momentarily, the car pulls to a stop past some gas pumps. At a late-night rest stop, Mercedes touches her neck. Traces the tendons with the filed edge of her manicured nails coated in a glossy sheen. From the intimacy of such a gesture, Wynonna jerks away. Shrinks back. Too fast, too real.

“What’re you up to? Imagining a collar?”

A little banter takes the edge off their constant rivalry although the constant need for instant gratification propels them forward. Amidst their infinite tête-à-tête, all coy flirtations and an attitude to be reckoned with are squandered, crushed – in tune with the age-old adage of a crush.

“No,” Mercedes muses aloud with a faint smile – the kind that gives her laughter lines and offers a glimpse of the free-spirited kid she used to be. “I was just thinking about how even a diamond necklace can’t capture... your essence.”

Without allowing Wynonna to speak up, she hushes her as they pull into the parking lot. Taps her lap with a stiff finger, as she excuses herself to buy a noxious nicotine fix. A “wait here” from Mercedes is enough to render the brunette compliant, for once. The leisurely sway of her body bestows a saunter that awaits the paparazzi’s flashing lights.

Without speaking, Wynonna closes her eyes to cherish the moment - never to reflect on it again, but to lock away the memory for safekeeping.

Having returned, Mercedes beeps the car, if only to derive sadistic glee from startling Wynonna. The profanity confirms the fact as she slips a Diet Coke into the cup holder and unravels the plastic film from her Marlboro menthols. With a cigarette dangling between her cherry red lips, she lights it up. The dull ember glows as a testament to survival, noxious fumes and smoke whirling out, whipping about.

Wynonna watches the act and wonders if part of it’s for show, as they take to the road once more.

Miss Pretty Petty squeezes her thigh and she feels the raging heat through thick, resilient denim. Manicured claws, neatly filed and enshrined in some clear coat, leave behind little red welts - crescent moons - on her exposed thigh. The rips in Wynonna’s jeans are all for show. 

Mercedes’ penchant for stress smoking takes perpetual root. Pretty things are always petty. Auburn hair curls below her jawline. Amidst the curtain of smoke, Mercedes smells of Dior or Chanel, one of those fancy brands you hear of on the TV and see in avant garde magazine ads splattered across _Cosmopolitan_ and _Vogue_. 

They take to passing lipstick-stained cigarettes back and forth between them. It tastes faintly of Mercedes: lies, quick wit, and a hint of toxic sweetness.

On the open road, no (literal) demons chase Wynonna. Despite the cavalier attitude toward her responsibilities and shirking off any sense of duty. Freeing laughter resembles a lifted spell. Again, Mercedes smirks – a kind of cryptic, Mona Lisa grin, that doesn’t show off her (too) straight, white teeth.

American gothic dreams haunt. Hunger slates and replaces loneliness; yeah, that’s it - that’s what she tells herself. So Wynonna drinks a little too much. Some vices are difficult to break, to curb. Their exerted breath, combined with the humidity from summer, fogs up the glass. 

Constant craving fuels ceaseless consumption. Mercedes flashes a Hollywood smile that makes Wynonna weak at the knees. She pulls a small bottle of Jack from her designer Chanel purse. She hands it over. Honestly, Mercedes could be as two-faced as Janus sometimes. 

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Mercedes?” She challenges before unscrewing the cap and wincing at the familiar burn as the whiskey makes its descent.

Ever a wayward spirit, Wynonna tests the waters. Herein lies a means to let loose, to simply be. Yet, vice feeds into vice. What transpires represents a Dionysian affair at a glance.

“Hand it over,” the Princess challenges with a flex of her free hand, the other distracted by keeping the car steady. The silver bracelet encompassing her wrist glimmers, dangles, dances.

With an unquenchable thirst for some life more than this, maybe no one ever taught them the value of temperance. They pass the bottle like a hidden, coveted relic. Back and forth, a brush of fingers, and a steady, heady gulp. The spice of whiskey scorches her lungs, more like ethanol. Liquid fire embraces Wynonna’s throat.

That small-town life ensues: driving aimlessly in the middle of the night, her hand on your thigh obscured by denim, the window open a crack, and a small bottle of cheap liquor to toss back and forth between you.

Rain plummets, loud and sudden. Large, messy droplets form a blinding splatter. Windshield wipers flick from side to side, watchful cat’s eyes in the illuminated dark. Mercedes switches gears. On the side of the road against the curve of a fearsome, hill, the engine stops purring, albeit with great reluctance. The other lane overlooks a flimsy metal gate and a steep descent into nothingness.

“We shouldn’t go any further. Drive, I mean,” Mercedes declares as she flicks out the butt of her cigarette, avidly avoiding the rain so it doesn’t muss her perfect hair. “-Don’t let that detour you.”

There’s a little wink insinuating something _more_ : the recklessness encompassed by brazen youth signifies that they shouldn’t yet they should. Upon this fated reunion, the hold on their masks lessens. For a short while, they get away. This seemingly impervious, omniscient force in motion shows no signs of stopping. 

The perturbing disruption of youth mingled with innocence signals the slow burn of an ill-fated romance that masquerades itself as a quarrel. However, their friendship continues to hold on. Familiar, creeping desire stirs. Wynonna throws her head back with a hoarse, nearly nervous laugh when the rain pounds against the windshield and keeps them trapped in place.

As a declaration of seduction, a hand clamps onto her knee that steels her. They fall into place. Leaning in, seizing hold of hips to die for clad in jeans, Mercedes kneads her clothed thigh with the fervor of a content housecat before making contact with those liquor lips to savor the whiskey blend.

No, Mercedes doesn’t mind the press and feel of Wynonna’s wind-kissed lips against her softer, plumper ones. Wynonna reciprocates, sinks her calloused fingers through the red curtain that makes up her hair and grips a bit too hard. She keeps her eyes open despite the liquor haze. This moment's realer than real with the perpetual rainfall, the pale face of the girl who used to bandage her scrapes, only to berate her into their teenaged years. Mercedes always liked her strays.

In a wet, lascivious kiss, she draws her bottom lip out with the slow dragging of her teeth. Exuding heat, she takes some of Mercedes’ Dior lipstick with her. Maybe, just maybe, she sucks the poison out from her. That caustic mouth tastes of whiskey, hedonistic tendencies, and recklessness. Her tongue scrapes against Mercedes’ and she swears there’s a lingering trace of those Manhattans she’s so fond of. In return, Wynonna tastes like toffee, cigarettes, some regrets, and the fiery punch of whiskey on a Sunday morning. Oh, how Wynonna moves with great haste. Loves a little too fiercely and fights dirty despite her heart of gilded gold.


End file.
